Simple Require

require.js is amazing, but sometimes you just want simple deferred loading. This does that in 60loc.

gotchas

This doesn't do async, builds, optimizations, or anything like that. Also doesn't do bi-directional associations, but since those are a design smell anyways, I have managed to get away so far without adding them in (if you introduce one, you will get a stack overflow exception).

usage

Simple require will introduce two globals -- require and define. Module definitions are executed (and memoized) when first required. To reset the cached definitions (this is sometimes needed in test code, but should NEVER be needed in production code!!), invoke define._clearCaches().

Half the code there is to let you know when you do something dumb, like forget to export anything, or define two modules with the same name.

// simple usage

define("some-module", function(module){
  module.exports = {
    a: 1,
    b: 2
  }
});

console.log(require('some-module').a) // => 1


// when you are returning a bag of functions, you may just want to use exports

define("some-module", function(module, exports){
  exports.foo = function(){
    return "HI"
  }
});

console.log(require('some-module').foo()) // => "HI"